How To Get B2B Leads & Clients On LinkedIn - Module 1 - Lesson 3 - LinkedIn Unlocked

Summary

In this LinkedIn Unlocked lesson, Neil Patel explores the nuances of B2B versus B2C marketing on LinkedIn, focusing on the B2B model. He outlines the sales process from lead generation to closing deals, emphasizing the importance of understanding the buyer's profile and tailoring the approach accordingly. Patel suggests using LinkedIn's Sales Navigator to find B2B prospects and offers actionable tips for optimizing profiles to enhance credibility and close sales effectively.

Takeaways

• 😀 LinkedIn Unlocked is a series focused on generating more followers and converting business connections into leads and customers.
• 🏢 The distinction between B2B and B2C marketing strategies is crucial for effective sales, with B2B involving longer sales cycles and higher price points.
• 💼 B2B sales often require interaction with salespeople and a more complex decision-making process compared to B2C, which is more direct to consumers.
• 📈 The B2B sales process typically involves multiple steps, including lead generation, discovery calls, strategic planning, and decision meetings.
• 🎯 Setting clear goals for each stage of the B2B sales process is essential, such as confirming appointments, qualifying leads, and demonstrating the business case.
• 🔍 Understanding the prospect's needs and benefits is key in both the discovery call and strategic planning stages to ensure a good fit and mutual understanding.
• 📚 Homework assignments, such as questionnaires and follow-up calls, are important for gathering information and developing the next steps in the sales process.
• 🔥 Creating a sense of urgency is vital in the strategic planning stage to motivate prospects to act quickly rather than delaying decisions.
• 🔎 LinkedIn is an often overlooked but powerful tool for B2B lead generation, with its vast user base and tools like Sales Navigator for targeting specific audiences.
• 📝 A well-crafted LinkedIn profile is crucial for B2B sales, as it helps establish credibility and fosters relationships with potential leads.
• 📚 The importance of tracking leads and using scripts tailored to your products or services is highlighted for effective B2B sales management.

Q & A

What is the primary focus of Neil Patel's 'LinkedIn Unlocked' session?

The primary focus of Neil Patel's 'LinkedIn Unlocked' session is to teach how to generate more followers, turn business connections into leads and customers, and specifically discuss B2B versus B2C marketing strategies using LinkedIn.

Where can viewers find the previous lessons of 'LinkedIn Unlocked'?

Viewers can find the previous lessons of 'LinkedIn Unlocked' by going to neilpatel.com/training and clicking on LinkedIn Unlocked.

What are the key differences between B2B and B2C sales cycles mentioned in the video?

B2C sales include lower price points, shorter sales cycles, fewer decision makers, and direct consumer sales, often with minimal interaction. B2B sales involve wholesale, distributions, larger chains, longer sales cycles, higher price points, and typically involve interactions with salespeople.

What are the steps typically involved in the B2B sales cycle according to Neil Patel?

The B2B sales cycle typically involves: receiving a lead, a discovery call, a strategic plan or presentation, a decision meeting, and various steps in between such as follow-ups and multiple calls.

What is the goal of a discovery call in B2B sales?

The goal of a discovery call in B2B sales is to get to know the prospect on a personal level, understand what products they are interested in, identify their issues and problems, and explain how you can help solve them.

How should sales representatives prepare for calls?

Sales representatives should aim to receive leads or confirm appointments, match the prospect to the ideal buyer profile, verify the lead's qualifications, understand the prospect's business, and cancel any bad or fake leads.

What should be included in the strategic plan during the B2B sales process?

The strategic plan should demonstrate the business case, outline the costs for products and services, show step-by-step how to work together to eliminate objections, create a sense of urgency, and emphasize the need for the solution.

What is the importance of LinkedIn in B2B marketing as per Neil Patel?

LinkedIn is an important tool in B2B marketing because it serves as a platform for lead generation, networking, and sales, with over 690 million users, including almost all B2B prospects.

How can LinkedIn Sales Navigator help in B2B marketing?

LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps in B2B marketing by allowing users to find their target audience using filters like keywords, job titles, industries, interests, and groups, which can then be integrated into their CRM for outreach.

What are some final action items Neil Patel suggests for viewers?

Neil Patel suggests viewers download and track their leads with the B2B Deal Tracker, download and modify the B2B script based on their products or services, and check out the previous lessons and upcoming lessons on neilpatel.com/training.

Outlines

00:00

📈 B2B vs B2C Marketing on LinkedIn

Neil Patel introduces the third lesson in his LinkedIn Unlocked series, focusing on the differences between B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing strategies. He emphasizes the importance of understanding whether you are in the B2B or B2C space and tailoring your marketing approach accordingly. B2C involves lower price points, shorter sales cycles, and direct consumer sales, while B2B involves higher price points, longer sales cycles, and interactions with salespeople. The session is aimed at B2B marketing, highlighting the typical B2B sales cycle and the steps involved, such as lead generation, discovery calls, strategic planning, and decision meetings. Patel also discusses the importance of call preparation, understanding the prospect's needs, and creating a sense of urgency in the sales process.

05:02

🔍 Utilizing LinkedIn for B2B Lead Generation

In the second paragraph, Neil Patel delves into the specifics of finding and closing B2B leads using LinkedIn. He suggests using LinkedIn's Sales Navigator to identify target audiences based on keywords, job titles, industries, interests, and groups. Patel advises on crafting connection requests that are likely to be accepted, such as reaching out to professionals in a specific field. He stresses the importance of relationship-building in sales, advising patience and a focus on long-term connections. Patel also highlights the significance of a well-crafted LinkedIn profile, including professional photos, detailed descriptions, skills, endorsements, and education, as these elements can impact the success of closing deals. He concludes by encouraging viewers to check out the previous lessons on LinkedIn Unlocked for more insights on setting up ad campaigns, building organic reach, and connecting with influencers.

Keywords

💡LinkedIn Unlocked

LinkedIn Unlocked is a series of lessons by Neil Patel focused on leveraging LinkedIn for business growth. It is the main theme of the video, where Neil discusses strategies for increasing followers, converting connections into leads and customers, and specifically addresses the differences between B2B and B2C marketing on the platform. The term is used throughout the script to introduce the topic and refer to the lessons available on Neil Patel's website.

💡B2B

B2B stands for 'Business-to-Business,' which refers to commerce transactions between businesses rather than between businesses and individual consumers. In the video, Neil Patel explains that B2B marketing on LinkedIn involves targeting other businesses, often with higher price points, longer sales cycles, and the need to interact with salespeople. Examples from the script include discussing the B2B sales model and how to use LinkedIn for B2B lead generation.

💡B2C

B2C stands for 'Business-to-Consumer,' which is the process of selling products or services directly to consumers. The video script mentions B2C in contrast to B2B, highlighting the differences in marketing strategies, such as lower price points, shorter sales cycles, and fewer decision-makers involved in the purchasing process.

💡Leads

In the context of the video, 'leads' refers to potential customers or clients who have shown interest in a business's product or service. Neil Patel discusses how to generate leads on LinkedIn, emphasizing the importance of understanding whether the leads are B2B or B2C to effectively convert them into customers.

💡Sales Cycle

The 'sales cycle' is the period from the initial contact with a potential customer to the final sale. The script explains that B2B sales cycles are typically longer than B2C, involving multiple steps and interactions, such as discovery calls and strategic presentations, before closing a deal.

💡Sales Navigator

Sales Navigator is a tool offered by LinkedIn designed to help sales professionals find and connect with potential customers. In the video, Neil Patel recommends using Sales Navigator to search for key words, positions, industries, interests, and groups to identify B2B prospects on LinkedIn.

💡Strategic Plan

A 'strategic plan' in the script refers to a detailed proposal or presentation made to potential B2B clients to demonstrate the value and benefits of a product or service. Neil Patel discusses the importance of creating a sense of urgency and addressing objections during the strategic plan presentation to facilitate a sale.

💡Sense of Urgency

Creating a 'sense of urgency' is a sales technique used to encourage potential customers to make a purchase decision quickly. In the video, Neil Patel emphasizes the importance of impressing upon prospects that delaying the decision could result in lost opportunities and wasted resources.

💡CRM

CRM stands for 'Customer Relationship Management,' which is a system used to manage interactions with current and potential customers. The script mentions using data from LinkedIn to tie into a CRM system, which can help in organizing and following up with leads effectively.

💡Profile

In the context of the video, 'profile' refers to a LinkedIn user's personal or business page, which includes information like headshots, descriptions, skills, endorsements, and education. Neil Patel stresses the importance of having a complete and professional profile to establish credibility and close deals on LinkedIn.

💡Influencers

Influencers are individuals who have the power to affect the opinions, attitudes, and behaviors of others because of their authority, knowledge, position, or relationship with their audience. The script suggests setting up a step-by-step approach to reach out to influencers and connect with them for potential business opportunities.

Highlights

Neil Patel discusses strategies for using LinkedIn to generate more followers and convert business connections into leads and customers.

The third lesson of the week focuses on the differences between B2B and B2C marketing on LinkedIn.

B2C marketing involves lower price points, shorter sales cycles, and fewer decision makers.

B2B marketing typically involves higher price points, longer sales cycles, and more interaction with salespeople.

Neil suggests focusing on B2B marketing in this lesson, as it is more effective on LinkedIn.

The B2B sales process often includes discovery calls, strategic plans, and decision meetings.

Call preparation is crucial, with goals to receive leads or confirm appointments and match prospects to ideal buyer profiles.

Understanding the prospect's business is key to determining if they are a good fit for your offerings.

The discovery call's goal is to get to know the prospect personally and understand their interests and problems.

Teaching prospects about your solutions and how they can solve their problems is a critical part of the discovery call.

Strategic plans should demonstrate the business case, costs, and benefits of your products and services.

Creating a sense of urgency is important to encourage prospects to move forward with your solution.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a powerful tool for finding B2B prospects and generating leads.

Using keywords, titles, industries, interests, and groups can help target the right audience on LinkedIn.

Neil recommends copying his approach to connecting with professionals on LinkedIn, emphasizing relationship-building.

A well-crafted LinkedIn profile is essential for closing deals, including a professional headshot, detailed description, and endorsements.

Neil encourages viewers to check out the previous lessons on LinkedIn Unlocked for more insights on profile optimization.

Upcoming lessons will cover setting up ad campaigns, building organic reach, and connecting with influencers on LinkedIn.

Action items include downloading the B2B Deal Tracker and modifying the B2B script based on your products or services.

Transcripts

- [Neil] Hi everyone, it's Neil Patel,

and today is another day of LinkedIn unlocked,

where I break down how to generate more followers,

turn those business connections into leads and customers.

And today we're going to be breaking down

the third lesson of the week, which is B2B versus B2C.

You can, in theory, use LinkedIn for a little bit of both.

Now, if you haven't caught up with the previous lessons,

you can go to neilpatel.com/training,

click on LinkedIn Unlocked

and that's where you'll find the previous two lessons.

Now, before we get started, you have to ask yourself,

are you in the B2B space or B2C space?

And how to market each

because that'll help you generate more sales.

And we'll discuss, as I mentioned today, B2B versus B2C,

and how you can use LinkedIn for both of them.

So selling B2C includes lower price points,

shorter sales cycles, fewer decision makers,

selling direct to the consumer.

95% of your sales would typically happen on your site

or platform or in sales

and you usually don't have too much interaction with people.

Selling on B2B is a little bit different.

It's wholesale, distributions, large chain retailers,

selling to organizations, much longer sales cycle,

higher price points,

and typically 80 plus percent of the time,

you're going to be having to go through salespeople.

Since we've already covered marketing in the B2C space

in the last few modules,

this time around, we're going to be focusing on B2B.

Now, granted, it works for B2C,

but it's more effective in B2B

and in general, it's just a really public social network

that everyone should be using.

So let's take a look at the typical B2B model.

Well, in business to business,

you know, they could buy on your website,

which is a fraction of the people.

But in most cases, you're going to get a lead

that turns into a discovery call.

If the discovery call is qualified,

it then goes into strategic plan or a presentation.

And then from there,

it usually goes into a decision meeting.

There's a lot of steps in between these five boxes,

but that's usually how it ends up playing out

and your sales cycle could be six months, could be one year,

it could be two months or three months or even two weeks,

but you'll find that there's a lot of different steps

within these boxes,

and the longer the sales cycle, the more followups,

the more calls you'll have.

So with your call preparation, you need a goal for you.

Your goal is to receive lead or confirm appointment.

You want to match the prospect to ideal buyer profile.

Is a lead, a qualified lead?

What's your website, what's your budget?

How many employees do they have?

How big is that organization?

Do they need a product or service that you're offering?

You want to understand their business

cause that'll help you determine

if they're a good fit or not.

Then the goal for the prospect.

They need to know what's in it for them,

what benefits them by working with you.

Then you have your homework.

In essence, your reps need to cancel bad or fake leads

cause you're going to get them.

I don't care what industry you are,

you always get bad or fake leads.

And you want to make sure you're going through all the leads

to make sure they're high quality

and you're focusing your time

on the people that are super qualified

that you shouldn't be closing.

So the discovery call.

What's your goal for the discovery call?

Well, it should be that you want to get to know them

on a personal level.

You want to understand what products they're interested in,

and what issues and problems they have

and how you can help solve them.

The goal for the prospect is to understand their own problem

because if they don't understand their own problem,

then you're going to have a bad first call

cause they're not going to really know

how you can help them.

And usually, companies don't have issues with that,

but you want to just really emphasize what problem they have

and just double check with them

and make sure you have the correct one

because if it's wrong, then throughout the next steps,

you're going to be wasting your time.

You want to be making sure

that you teach them about the solutions you have to offer

and how it can help with their problems.

And then the homework assignment

is usually at the end of that discovery call.

You want to give them a questionnaire to them

that they fill out so you can better help them.

And you want to start developing the next steps,

which would be a call within seven days

or a week or two to review everything that you've learned

for the strategic plan.

And with the strategic plan,

your goal should be to demonstrate the business case

and the cost for the products

and the services that you're selling.

You want to show them step by step,

how you can work together to eliminate objections.

You want to create a sense of urgency by wowing them

and showing them how if they don't move forward,

they're losing time, they're losing money,

they have to end up doing wastes of cycles.

So in that way, they don't just need your solution,

but they need your solution today.

Because if there's no sense of urgency,

they can just move forward in a year or two from now.

And when they think they can do it in a year from now,

chances are they'll forget about it within that year

and never call you back.

Goal for them is to know what is the best and next steps.

They need to gain an understanding

of what is the spend going to be

and what is the exact results I get from spending that.

As for a homework assignment,

you want to recap the presentation

by emailing them what was discussed, a recording,

any action items.

If you record the presentation,

let them know in advance before you record

that you are actually recording it.

And if there is any way for them

to just purchase right then and there without contracts,

you can just send them a payment link.

For a lot of people,

it ends up being, you send them a contract.

So for my business, once we're done with our strategic plan,

we send up a contract right then and there,

so that way they have time to review it,

which then leads into a decision meeting.

And you want to identify

and resolve any main objections that they have left.

You should have identified and answered any objections

or a lot of the main ones on the strategic plan,

but still what you'll find is,

sometimes people will still have the same objections

over and over again.

That means you're not doing a good job

explaining the solution.

And if that's the case,

try different way to explain the solution.

You also want to ask for their commitment

and identify the next step if they're ready.

Goal for the prospect

is to understand the plan and the expected deliverables,

what they're exactly going to get, how it's going to work,

any the implementation or time, or costs.

And homework assignments would just be onboarding, starting.

The start date, figuring out when it's going to happen,

and of course, the welcome email or kickoff calls.

Well, now that you know how to close B2B leads,

the real question is, where do you find them?

LinkedIn is often an overlooked sales tool

when it comes to B2B marketing.

People just think it's a place where you can go

and push content,

but no, it's an amazing place for lead generation as well

and it's great for sales reps.

They have over 690 million users.

Almost all B2B prospects can be found on LinkedIn.

I want you to check out the Sales Navigator from LinkedIn

and it's a great way to help you find your target audience.

You can look up things like key words,

position that the person's in, like their title,

like a VP of marketing or CEO, or CMO, or COO,

the industry they're in, their interests, their groups.

This will all give you data and you can use this data

to tie it into your CRM

and then start shooting them off emails and messages like,

"Hey, name.

I'm looking to expand my network of marketing professionals.

Would you be open to connecting?"

It sounds simple, but a lot of people will accept that.

Try that out, copy me.

You don't have to come up with anything new.

Just use whatever's already working for me.

In sales, everything is relationship-based.

Leads take a while to close.

Whether it's 90 days or 120 days, don't be shortsighted.

Focus on the long run, help people out.

And if you want to stay and connect with them

and you want to be top of mind,

your profile is super important,

from your headshots that we already discussed

to writing well thought out descriptions,

to bringing down your skills, your endorsements,

your education.

All of that is super important

and if you don't do this right,

it's going to be harder to close these deals.

So if you haven't done this,

go check out the last lesson where I broke all of this down

and you can find it at neilpatel.com/training.

Just click on LinkedIn Unlocked

and it'll help you prepare for next week,

which we're going to go over setting up ad campaigns,

building your organic reach,

so that way you get more followers organically.

Setting up a step by step approach

to reaching out to influencers and connecting with them.

And of course, case studies,

so you get and a good understanding of who to follow,

what you can learn from them

and how you can replicate their results.

Last minute action items for you.

Go to neilpatel.com/training, click on LinkedIn Unlocked.

This is week one, the last video lesson in there

and underneath the video, you'll find two action items.

I want you to download and track your leads

with the B2B Deal Tracker

and I want you to download your B2B script

and modify it based on your products or services.

Thank you for listening in.

I look forward to helping you crush it on LinkedIn.

Next week, we'll have three more lessons for you.

Thank you for watching.